Lenica, Tomaszewski, Świerzy, Pągowski and many other Polish surnames are already famous abroad. Their works, known as the Polish School of Posters, are recognizable and admired without special promotion. It’s time to mention that nowadays Polish graphic designers also design great posters with a lot of freshness, freedom but as a continuation of their masters as well.
AMS Poster Gallery in Warsaw organizes a social poster competition each year. What participants have to do is to reflect upon the topic of the competition. Then, the jury choose a winner and featured works which are going to be published in public spaces almost in all cities in Poland. It’s really nice idea to talk about serious social problems and to show that art, design and culture are not so different, but also to see the review of modern Polish posters.
By the end of 2014, the topic of the 15th edition was “common space – nobody’s space?”. In the brief of the competition we can read: “The task is to create a poster, which will be a voice in a discussion about a public space. Who is responsible for a common space? All of the users? Nobody?” In the results we can see that designers have let the recipients to answer these questions as they didn’t indicate who is responsible according to them.
That’s why Adrian Gruszecki won this edition because “a good social poster shouldn’t indicate one good resolution and can’t be a propaganda agitation. None of us likes to be forced to do anything, even if we agree with an appeal. Good social posters are limited to present a problem, encourage to think, to ask questions and to look for a solution by yourself”, said Janusz Górski, the curator of the competition.
Adam Gruszecki is a student of Faculty of Fine Arts in Toruń, and among the featured designers there are four graduates and one student more – Agnieszka Cieślikowska, Patryk Klos, Hanna Sitarz, Jakub Szymański, Agnieszka Ziemiszewska.
Congratulations!
Here you can see all the posters from all editions.